EXCLUSIVE: YouTube and social video specialist James Dolan has launched his own venture, Beam Digital.
The former ITV Studios (ITVS) and Little Dot Studios exec will work in two main areas: Advising organizations, rights holders and content creators on digital strategy, and working with IP and brands to build out their digital worlds, particularly on YouTube.
Beam Digital will help work with partners on anything from digital strategy to managing YouTube channels, mining libraries and or repackaging content as social video.
Dolan, who has been consulting since exiting ITV’s production and sales arm, ITVS, in August last year. There, he worked in several roles, including Director of Digital Channels, a post that saw him oversee ITVS’s YouTube channels. Since then, he has consulted for All3Media, whose subsidiary, Little Dot, he worked for between 2013 and 2016.
His theory is that while the opportunity in the digital space is booming, there is an industry shortage of skilled talent to capitalize. To that end, Beam will also offer practical training sessions and workshops that allow production companies and other entertainment business to better migrate members of their teams to digital workflows.
“With the blinkers well and truly removed as to the opportunities on YouTube and social platforms, the content industry is experiencing a bit of a gold rush moment at the present – but we don’t want anyone to get burned,” said Dolan. “At Beam Digital, our focus is on creating and building long-term, sustainable activity with our partners and clients.
“We do this by starting with audience and data-led strategies to establish sound foundations and then make sure we identify and nurture direct relationships with engaged and loyal communities. We work hard to continuously find ways to unlock new revenues and commercial opportunities from social video and we are passionate about passing the baton on and equipping partners with the skills and knowledge to confidently navigate the social video landscape and grow their own channels.”
While at ITVS, he oversaw the digital distribution and monetisation of a 90,000-hour catalogue and managed a portfolio of over 140 digital and social channels, from single-IP brands such as Come Dine With Me, This Morning and Hell’s Kitchen, to genre and thematic channels.
More recently, while consulting for All3, he created a detailed social media playbook and guidelines for international format licensees and broadcasters keen to get maximum value and engagement from their adaptations of The Traitors. He has also worked with Acamar Films on preschool series Bing, including developing several local-language channels.
“Our passion is more than about helping individual companies earning as much revenue as possible,” he said. “With changing business models, new ways of engaging audiences and a dropping off in TV commissions, there is growing unemployment in the traditional side of the content business. If we can help stem job losses by re-training people in production companies and distributors, for example, and simultaneously help meet the growing demand for expert digital channel managers, it’s a win-win situation for individuals, companies and the evolving industry as a whole.”
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